When Naturally Boulder put on its annual awards event last year, local businesswoman Kerry Gilmartin did not plan on attending the entrepreneurial Pitch Slam competition.

Touting her nursing pad company Bamboobies and talking about breastfeeding and leaking on stage at the Boulder Theater seemed "petrifying," to say the least, she said.

But after receiving encouragement from friends, that's where Gilmartin found herself, and that helped eventually land her budding company top honors in the annual competition and a $26,000 prize package of business support services.

A year later, Bamboobies is two months out from shipping its hand-sewn nursing pads to the 450-store base of Babies "R" Us.

"It wasn't just winning (the pitch slam)" that resulted in the contract that doubled her retail store base, Gilmartin said. "The networking and the judges led to getting in touch with just the right sales person at just the right time."

Wednesday, more than two dozen local natural products companies will try their hand at this year's Pitch Slam, which caps off the annual Naturally Boulder awards event. The awards show and Pitch Slam finals event is sold out; however, the Pitch Slam semifinals take place from noon to 4 p.m. at Rembrandt Yard, 1301 Pearl St.

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Naturally Boulder Days, once a two-day conference, is designed to further the nonprofit organization's mission of building Boulder's natural products industry, said Sonja Tuitele, a Naturally Boulder spokeswoman.

"Frankly a big part of what we're doing (Wednesday) is celebrating the successes in our industry," she said.

The industry has continued its growth despite the murky economic times, she said, meaning good news for businesses that have an estimated $2.5 billion economic impact in Colorado.

The successes also include notable recent developments such as Smart Balance relocating its headquarters to Boulder and rebranding itself as Boulder Brands Inc. and also Dean Foods spinning off its Broomfield-based WhiteWave Foods unit via an initial public offering, she said.

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